


distillation

by Anonymous



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, some people die of old-age but it's a happy ending i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Bartimaeus looks for answers in the Other Place.
Relationships: Bartimaeus/Ptolemy (Bartimaeus)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Anonymous





	distillation

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting as a WIP for over five years now and to be honest, I don't recall exactly what I was trying to get at, but I've always wanted closure via a canon-compliant alive!Ptolemy route, and I guess this is where that took me.

Minds and memories seeped through them as they were welcomed back into the rushing tide of essence. For the briefest of moments, they felt deliciously whole, a great and infinite being that could only be, and could never stop being. Then there was a name – _Bartimaeus_ – and he felt his essence draw to him, bending at the edges like folded paper. He reached out in desperate longing, but the separation remained sharp and defined even as endless streams began to fill the cracks and holes in his essence, renewing his power and reminding him of what he was.

Snatches of conversation teased at him; he could make out some that seemed real – _memories_ – and some that did not, some that were his and some that were not. Some were new – _we are diminished_ – and echoed with the cry of many voices. Bartimaeus let himself fall into their sorrowful call, keenly aware of their loss. They shuffled through his memories and a new whisper rustled through them. _Nouda is gone_ , they lamented. Bartimaeus could hear them weep for Faquarl too, and Naeryan, and many more. _Nouda is lost. We are diminished._

Yet even as they grieved they were infused with an influx of essence from the outside world. A blade of grass, trampled under the frenzy of battle, spoke of sunlight thick as sugar. A cluster of cells claimed humanity in a crazed moment of folly, then relinquished it, reforming into an imp. Bartimaeus felt a flicker of recognition as it brushed past him, but if he had known the source of the imp’s essence once, it had since transformed too far for him to tell. His thoughts dissolved as the river of essence threaded through him, dispersing his essence into indeterminate fragments, and he embraced the unending flow of the Other Place. At last, there was nothing left for him but to simply _be_.

_A cruel magician reached too far with his whip and was conquered before he could gasp out a dismissal. Several foliots giggled as they were released from their service. A tall building rose up amidst a whirl of sand, the image overlaid with that of an afrit sweeping kings from their chariots. A dust-spattered eagle rushed towards a lion with a brilliant – obnoxious – mane as the lion vanished into nothing, revealing a boy, clothed in splendour, aged beyond his years –_

Bartimaeus snapped out of the flow and clung to the memory. Essence that was not his engulfed him – _why do you haunt me?_ – and he fought it, expanding the vision until it stretched out infinitely on all sides.

_Would that I could spare you, the djinni whispered. Roman soldiers marched on through the smoking ruins of –_

_Go back!_ ordered Bartimaeus –

_The boy was calm, smiling even. The boy was unusual. The boy had an aura more beautiful than any of the Earth-dwellers. The boy –_

_His name was Ptolemy._

“But what _is_ your name, really?”

Ptolemy regarded the djinni with a long-suffering air that could only mean he had heard the question far too often before.

“We can test it again if you like, but it would be preferable for you to trust me.”

Bartimaeus shrugged as much as a cat could. Later, he might admit to feeling some unease at the memories evoked by Ptolemy’s reply. For all that Bartimaeus enjoyed seeing his masters as uncomfortable as he was, he was not the sort of spirit who openly attempted to prolong anyone’s pain. He remembered each punishment he had ever received, each testament to the depravity of magicians across the ages. Too much feeble human brainpower had been wasted on finding ways to prolong the suffering of innocent beings.

“There is no need. I still think you were overreacting with the Minor Pinch, though.”

Ptolemy’s smile made his aura flare liquid gold. If Bartimaeus had been the type to wax poetic – naturally, he was sophisticated enough to compose odes that would have brought tears to Jabor’s fourteen eyes when he wanted to, but this was not one of those times – he would have said that _beautiful_ was too shallow a word to describe the way Ptolemy’s skin glowed under the radiance of that aura.

“Some of the servants were gossiping about you in the bath houses, by the way.”

The cat stretched lazily and shifted into a pretty boy with pearly teeth. When Ptolemy failed to acknowledge the artistry of the creation, Bartimaeus grew himself some extra hands and poked the boy in the cheek. Repeatedly.

“Can it wait one measurement of the water, Rekhyt? I was wondering why Anhotep dislikes changing form when many of you so obviously enjoy it.”

“Anhotep changes his form in more subtle ways. His arms get longer every time he has to empty your privy pot. Don’t give me that look – you humans are dirtier than your cousin’s favourite wineskin. Anyway, it can’t wait. I’ll forget it.”

Ptolemy sighed and tugged on one of the spirit’s hands. “Get on with it, then.”

“One of them composed a poem for you. It was quite good, for something written by an inferior life form.”

“Rekhyt.”

“Not really sorry. It went something like…”

_Rising like the morning star_

_at the start of a happy year._

_When he steps outside he seems like that the Sun!_

(Papyrus Chester Beatty I, _The Sayings of the Great Happiness_ )

_I wrote it myself_.

Around them the essence was almost still, light and voices suspended in overlapping pentagons. Bartimaeus drew some to him, knitting Ptolemy out of sand to show the other spirit.

_He had an aura I have never seen in a human,_ the spirit mused. _I asked him why, before I scattered his essence._

Another voice floated towards them. _We were curious. As we waited our curiosity grew, and yet we could hardly bear to touch him. The child was silent; he had no strength left to talk._

Bartimaeus flinched away from this topic. His essence recoiled by reflex, but the pull of the newcomer was stronger than his influence. He heard its curiosity and was compelled to answer. _Ptolemy had been home to the Other Place, and he had almost become part of it. His essence, strong for a human, would have been inferior to an imp’s prior to his departure, but it expanded, somehow, through his visit. Perhaps his earthly vitality, no longer required, had drained into his aura while he was there._

_Is that so,_ mused one spirit. _Aetius did not know it was possible. Even had he been a being of essence we would still have had our orders._

Time, or the temporary framework that contained it, shifted at the spirit’s command. _You will not suffer long, I consoled him. He raised his head to me and smiled._

Bartimaeus saw that smile layered above the countless others that have been ingrained into the memories of his essence. _I should have liked to converse more with you, Ptolemy said._ He had spoken the words to Bartimaeus many times prior to dismissing him, as he had to the rest of the spirits he summoned. Every time, he appeared as radiant as the sun.

_His essence was light_ , agrees the spirit who once went by the name of Aetius. _His body was heavy, slumped against the wall. He may have passed on even before the Inferno struck._

It was too much – too concrete, too personal. Bartimaeus slipped out of the memory and away from swirling memories. His essence was spread thinner than paper, unable even to dance with the streams of essence surrounding him. To his surprise, Aetius followed. _You grieve, Bartimaeus._

A chorus of voices joined them. _You grieve. We are grieved, Bartimaeus. We are grieved._

Slowly, borne by a swell of sorrow, the spirits moved. Above and inside the stream, memories were unleashed, intersecting with one another until Ptolemy’s solemn face was merely one in a long line of lost memories, rapidly growing too small for Bartimaeus to see.

~

“WHO DARES SUMMON ME, BARTIMAEUS OF URUK, THE MIGHTLY SAKHR AL-JINNI? I AM A BEING OF INFINITE POWER. I HAVE SURVIVED THE GREAT REBELLION OF LONDON, I HAVE – oh, hello Kitty. You’re looking much better than last time I saw you. By the way, you should really use a pentacle. Obviously _I’m_ perfectly safe, but there’s a foliot behind you who _really_ looks like he’s about to jump on you.”

“Don’t insult Peter,” snapped Kitty. “He’s perfectly trustworthy, and now you’ve made me lose my train of thought.”

“That’s such a novel phrase,” Bartimaeus sighed happily. “Some of my more studious masters used to tell me they had _altogether lost the thread_ when I tried to distract them. Didn’t have quite the same impact, trains being faster and actually moving and all that, though the metaphor is sadly lacking when it comes to your strange mind. Fast it may be, but there are no mappable tracks that I can find, and that’s saying something. I once mapped the trails of ten thousand ants for Solomon so he could find inspiration for those proverbs of his. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if the order was actually from him or if the magicians just wanted to have some fun at our expense.”

“Good to know. Ah, that’s right. You can take that pile over there.”

“Destroying more records of my glorious deeds, Kitty? Some would say you’re sending London back to the Dark Ages. Not that those times were any better for us.”

“Shut up,” she said. “The other countries still aren’t cooperating much, as expected, but we’ve been getting a good response from the younger generation, and thanks to the internet we’ve been able to start educating people overseas too. Hopefully things will start to change over there soon. Anyway, there aren’t many books left with your name in them, I think. So you won’t have to worry about that.”

“Please, the tales of my exploits are more numerous than the wrinkles on your face. Ouch! And listen to you! I remember you told me you were _done with all the magic stuff_ ; you said you _just needed to be sure_ I was dead – which I was not, of course, being as fabulous as I am – and now here you are, right up there with the other big shots in politics.”

“Magicians are stubborn idiots,” said Kitty shortly. Bartimaeus would have left it at that – it was the truth, after all; Nathaniel had been the epitome of magicians through the ages for most of his career, and even Ptolemy had been downright bullish about some things – except then Kitty looked at him and amended, “Demons, too.”

There were so many things wrong with those two words that even with his exceptional intelligence, Bartimaeus had to take some time to decide where to begin with the corrections. Kitty took advantage of the stunned silence to prattle off about her day. She spoke for so long that Bartimaeus forgot what he had been going to say.

“You’re wasting your breath,” he said instead, which he thought was a rather polite way to tell her he wasn’t listening. She was one of his favourite humans, after all – and that, in turn, was a rather formal way of saying he would squeeze the essence out of anyone who tried to hurt her.

“I should let Becca have a turn with you,” she grumbled. “I haven’t even mentioned the Irish magicians yet; we have a delegation down for the weekend and you would not _believe_ some of the things they do to their slaves.”

“Dear Ms Piper is very sweet, but I would really rather finish up whatever it is you’ve called me here to do and go home where I won’t have this, you know, terribly uncomfortable pain in my essence.”

Kitty bit her lip. Her radiant aura dimmed a little.

“I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that while it _has_ been a nice chat, seeing that woman gives me all sorts of trauma from back when – oops, sorry, still too soon. To put it another way, I am perfectly happy to keep your lonely self company – ouch! – but every time you see Piper she asks about your wedding to the nice Hyrnek boy and you get all flustered, which is rather awkward to witness considering there are no wedding plans. Ooh, look at you, you’ve already gone all red.”

“It’s fine,” she gritted out, her cheeks burning. “I get it, so just shut up, please? I just – I know you don’t like it here.”

“Oh, Kitty,” said Bartimaeus. “You know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to.” There were no pentacles in sight. Kitty looked at him, taking in his dark, heavy eyes. There was always something unsettling about a spirit’s gaze; no matter how perfect the disguise, there were times when the foreign pull of the Other Place would stir in a spirit, calling them back to where they belonged. Bartimaeus was an odd spirit, but he was still undeniably a spirit.

“Thank you,” she said, “and goodbye.”

He followed the word through many partings, from the fall of Rome to the dawn of the Mesopotamian civilisation. There, he found the familiar thread of the lives he had been entwined with during his time away from the Other Place. A cluster of lights drew him to them, twinkling with the promise of _a farewell that did not cause pain_.

Bartimaeus rested at the conclusion of that promise, at the intersection between _goodbye_ and _hello again_. The memory was tainted by the stink of iron and the stifling presence of an old foe.

“You’ve become downright tame,” Faquarl said. He was in the guise of a large tern and was perched on a nearby rooftop for the sole purpose of gazing disdainfully down at Bartimaeus as he ground iron to make kohl. “Does that not hurt?”

The Bartimaeus of this memory grunted. He might have meant, _It will be worth the pain_.

“All this for the little Egyptian boy? You said he was a _nice_ master, a _different_ master. The great Bartimaeus, fooled into taking orders from a twelve-year-old?”

Bartimaeus hesitated. He became aware, suddenly, of the proximity of the iron rod. It seared across his essence, worse than burning coals. His pile of kohl would fill less than a single talon. “I’m not under orders.”

Faquarl’s beak curled. Or bent slightly; it was hard to tell. “I can see that. You are a perverse spirit, Bartimaeus – you and the rest of this household.”

A large rat with wings for whiskers smacked Faquarl out of the air with said wing-skers. “You’re intruding again,” said Affa sternly. “Why are you so obsessed with Rekhyt?”

Bartimaeus was too disgusted by the implications of that question to be grateful for Affa’s support. For once, he and Faquarl were in agreement.

“I am not _obsessed_ with Bartimaeus,” sniffed Faquarl in disdain. He puffed out his feathers like the pompous fool he was and took off, Bartimaeus was delighted to see, in the direction of the Nile.

“Affa, is that laundry? Thanks for before; I can take that for you.”

The rat relinquished the basket and licked him on the cheek before scaling the nearest wall and jumping into the air. “May the wind stroke your fur in the right direction, Rekhyt. The pyramids had near shut me in with work.”

With Affa safely out of sight, Bartimaeus sped after Faquarl. One perfectly-aimed toss and the fat bird was grappling with linen, plunging into the water with a splash that would have reached the ears of the deaf child who came to the river every morning to draw water.

_No wounds inflicted in that place can scar us_ , a chorus of voices crooned, seeping into the bruised parts of Bartimaeus’ essence. _Where you grieve, we grieve, and we rejoice. We are infinite._

Every spirit had experienced the comfort of being healed by the ocean of essence they were immersed in. The fragment named Bartimaeus was unlucky enough to have been summoned to earth and experience the opposite. _I was wounded,_ he said. _My hurt remains._

_My hurt is my name,_ howled a dark wind, furious as a tempest. _My name, keeping me bound, holding me under that magician’s curse_.

_My hurt is death,_ whispered a small spark, flitting between images of a drooping flower and a blood-stained field. _I was one of many, but the being I was is gone, and his memories have been lost to us_.

Bartimaeus rested in the circle of lights that still surrounded him and thought of the farewell that did not cause him pain. _My hurt is separation_ , he declared, allowing the tide of essence to carry him with it. _My pain is a name that no longer has an anchor. I am free, but I am still Rekhyt, and I have nobody to revoke that name._

The ocean spoke. _Who do you seek?_

He envisioned Ptolemy’s shape, as he remembered him from that time, but it would not fill. He tried to take essence from the stream – _why do you wound us?_ – from the threads of essence as they poked at him – _we do not belong there_ – and he chased them as they withdrew – _do not divide us_. He began to tear at himself, but the shape would not hold, and where he let part of himself go it was remade anew, essence diffusing out of his control.

Several tendrils crowded around him. _Here there is neither creation nor destruction. If you call, it will find you, if it exists. You know this, little djinni._

Bartimaeus called, but he received no answer.

~

The fiery tail and overgrown antlers did actually manage to frighten Hyrnek from his pentacle. Becca, on the other hand, remained unfazed, save for a fleeting upward tilt of her lips.

“It’s rare to see you in a pentacle,” remarked Bartimaeus. “Though if we’re being technical, I suppose you’re not in one anymore.”

Hyrnek squeaked and cowered down, even though any self-respecting magician should know that if a spirit hadn’t devoured you the instant it was summoned, that generally meant those blasted pentacles were sadly intact. It took a swift kick from Becca to bring him back to his senses; she had always been the more sensible of the two. Neither of them had Kitty’s impact – it was why they were stuck running around here while she was absent. Bartimaeus cast his eye around the room anyway, just to check that she wasn’t trying to scare him.

His subtle movements were noticed by Becca, whose stiff posture grew even stiffer as she observed him. “I won’t keep you long,” she said. “We just thought you should know.”

“Always a good thing to hear after I’ve already been painfully ripped away from my place of rest,” Bartimaeus said graciously. “Know what? You look hideous, by the way.”

It wasn’t a lie. Hyrnek’s fists were clenched, his eyes red-rimmed. He looked as if he hadn’t showered in days, and while Becca was at least presentable, on closer inspection, her essence was rather dim.

She regarded him with an almost pitying gaze. “Kitty passed away two days ago.”

The antlers shrank; the fiery tail was extinguished. Nathaniel’s body, reasonably replicated – Bartimaeus had always thought his old master would look far more fetching if he’d spent a bit more time in the sun – crumpled in on itself. It was the only form Bartimaeus felt would grieve properly for Kitty Jones. Hyrnek, trembling all the while, stumbled over and placed his gnarled white hands on Nathaniel’s shoulders.

It had not seemed like a long span of time at all, to Bartimaeus. Yet when he looked again at the two of them, he would see how white Becca’s hair was, how delicate the skin on her cheeks had become. Hyrnek, too, was crooked in his spine and walked with an unbalanced shuffle. _Morbidity_ was a human concept, but loss was a concept that Bartimaeus was well familiar with. As all essence cycled back to the Other Place in time, eventually this Empire of theirs would also fall. Everything they had spent their lives protecting, everything Kitty and Nathaniel had given their lives to, would vanish.

“Dismiss me,” he said. His voice was not soft and deadly like the rustle of grass in powerful storms, nor did it reverberate through the room as it had in his days as a warrior stationed in the armies of mighty kings. It was raw and broken, almost human – and it was his own.

Did humans always grieve alone like this?

A woman and a man joined hands and spoke. Bartimaeus consigned them, too, to memory.

~

The Other Place surged like the desert sands, violent and overwhelming. Bartimaeus sank into the whirling mess of colour, scattering himself as far across the sands as he could. His essence remained bound by the name he had been given, locked into a defined collection of thoughts and memories, but the thinner he spread himself, the more he found his own emotions overlaid with unfamiliarity.

Bartimaeus rested – he could not tell how long he had been still, simply allowing the whirlwinds of essence to pass over him. Kitty must have done a thorough job of purging him from history before she died. His essence felt fuller than it had for a long time.

On one occasion, when the streams of essence had slowed to a gentle trickle, he called: _Ptolemy_.

His own memories gathered around him, his essence constricting back into itself, brushing past millennia as it withdrew. _He is not here_ , the voices answered. _He is not ours to claim_.

Still he called, visualising the splendour of his Ptolemy’s essence, the intricate details he had perfected over his lifetimes on Earth.

_Child, why do you persist? All wounds will heal with time._

He stretched out his essence and found his answer. _My wounds have healed,_ he replied. _My hurt is not him_.

The spirit named Bartimaeus was an unusual one; the human named Ptolemy was also an odd master. Where Bartimaeus expected pain, Ptolemy used no punishments; where he was called _slave_ , he was gifted freedom. Ptolemy’s aura had shone with a glory beyond that of a human, but he had died in the common way of humans on Earth. Perhaps his essence was still there, scattered under concrete jungles and bitumen roads.

Perhaps –

_Rekhyt_.

Alexandria, under the reign of the Sun.

Ptolemy asked him once, sitting upright and alert as always: “Tell me about death.”

“That’s a rather dark topic for a lad as young as you are,” Bartimaeus said, mirroring Ptolemy’s cross-legged posture. “What brought this on? Those assassins last night? The lunar eclipse? Are you finally starting to take my warnings about your cousin seriously?”

“You know I take everything you say seriously as long as you’re being genuine,” Ptolemy assured him. “I understand your concerns, but I’d like you to understand my priorities, too.”

Bartimaeus snorted and turned into a bird so he could peck Ptolemy’s hand sharply. “I understand your priorities just fine. They’re perfectly reasonable as long as you read them in reverse order.”

“ _Rekhyt!_ ”

The bird – Bartimaeus – fluffed up its feathers. “You know I’m right,” he insisted. “What sort of lunatic doesn’t prioritise their own life above everything else? Let me tell you, if your cousin came in right now and threw his sacred chamber pot at your head, I’d be off to the Other Place, no hesitation. And if you think Penrenutet or Teti would do differently, I’d strongly advise you to think again.”

“Breathe, Rekhyt.” Ptolemy’s slender hand smoothed over the bird’s feathers. His lips quirked up briefly. “I would never do you the disrespect of asking you to stand in the way of my cousin’s chamber pot.” He patted his papyrus. “Now, back to the topic at hand. I gather that death does not occur in the Other Place, but if so, what happens to spirits who die on Earth? Is the total volume of essence in the Other Place being depleted due to excessive summoning by magicians? Is there a conduit between the two worlds so that essence can be siphoned back to where it came from?”

“You humans are so weird,” Bartimaeus said, in lieu of an answer. Despite his sizeable intellect, his master had a way of asking questions that required a considerable amount of bull-wrangling to respond to. “I’ve never died, so I couldn’t tell you for certain, but it sure looks unpleasant. I’ve seen essence scatter plenty of times, but I’ve never seen it come together again on Earth. Of course, it’s a different matter if I consume it.”

Ptolemy scribbled something on his parchment and furrowed his brow. “Theoretically, if one were to gather those scattered pieces of essence, could they knit together again, or does essence become inanimate when it separates from the main body, as defined by your name?”

The bird flapped its wings in an approximation of a shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine. In the Other Place? Possibly. On Earth, it’d be pretty difficult to collect up all the pieces. You might end up missing something important. Say, why don’t we experiment with that cousin of yours? He already has such a tiny amount of essence it’d be easy as corn to scoop it up again. And who’s to care if he ends up losing an arm or leg along the way, hey? Even better, we could do him a favour and rid him of his brain, since it doesn’t seem like he’s using it – ”

“Don’t be crass,” Ptolemy scolded, but his eyes were dancing with laughter.

The sight brought Bartimaeus an odd sense of satisfaction – similar to the taste of victory when he managed to one-up a cocky afrit. He shifted back into the guise of a young man, darker than Ptolemy and reasonably handsome enough that he wouldn’t disgrace his master by standing beside him. “Don’t worry,” he told Ptolemy. “I’m a respectable djinni; I’d never let you down.”

The smile he was awarded in return was warm and gentle. He doubted that Ptolemy had exhausted his line of questioning, but the silence stretched on. It was a comfortable peace, adorned by the golden rays of sunlight shining through the window.

At last, Ptolemy tilted his head and put his parchment down. “Rekhyt,” he said, “tell me about life in the Other Place.”

Bartimaeus laughed – an open sound, free and vast, light as the wind. “Life?” he said, naked longing in his tone. “That’s simple – it’s just being there together, the way we were meant to be.”

_Oh_ , he thinks. Ptolemy’s essence wraps around him, bright and brilliant and comforting. _We’re alive._


End file.
